


Heart of glass

by 100PercentRebelTimeLady



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28000728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100PercentRebelTimeLady/pseuds/100PercentRebelTimeLady
Summary: Canon-compliant and set immediately after The Caretaker. The Doctor struggles to keep his jealousy under control in the face of Clara's new soldier boyfriend.Based on a prompt from Yowzah-shipper on tumblr.... Can you please do a Whouffaldi prompt where the Doctor gets incredibly jealous when he finds out Clara is dating Danny... and the rest is up to you?
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	Heart of glass

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I was initially quite keen to find a way of descending this into smut, but it felt too out of character in the context of this story so it's stayed PG-13 and ended up heading down a somewhat fluffy/angsty route instead. I'm very bad at planning out stories, so this just went down whatever path felt natural and in-character as I was writing. Hopefully it's an enjoyable read. Let me know your thoughts!

A PE teacher. Clara Oswald was dating a _PE_ teacher. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the man also had to go and be a bloody soldier to boot. The Doctor scowled at the display screen on the TARDIS console as though the swirling symbols had done something to personally offend him. He felt his ship give a quiet hum in what was presumably supposed to be a soothing gesture, but it did little to abate his ire. How on earth could he be expected to calm down when Clara had made such a monumental boyfriend error? 

Naturally, it was the unsuitability of her chosen partner that bothered him – not the fact that she had decided to find herself a boyfriend at all. Clara was free to date whomever she liked, as long as they didn’t teach PE, shoot people for a living, or have the gall to be anyone that wasn’t him. 

_Not her boyfriend._ He reminded himself firmly. In his previous body, the lines had blurred but since his regeneration he’d made a point of re-establishing the boundaries, largely out of a sense of self-preservation. Getting too attached never ended well for him. 

_Right. Time to get a grip._ Just because Clara’s boyfriend was a PE teacher, soldier, pudding brain _and_ he’d had the gall to save them all from imminent destruction, didn’t mean that the Doctor had to stand around in the console room moping about it for eternity. He was a Time Lord, for Rassilon’s sake. No, he would forget about pudding brain soldier man and go find some planets to save – that always helped to put him in a good mood.

Resolutely walking around the console, he traced his fingers along the edge of a lever as he pondered the infinite options in front of him. Maybe saving planets wasn’t the way to go – perhaps he could pay a visit to Marilyn Monroe or stop by for a game of scrabble with the king of Asenhai. Bloody Matikan was always cheating though. Thought he was being clever by making up words under the assumption that the Doctor wasn’t fluent in his native language. What he didn’t know was that if the TARDIS didn’t translate it, then it was a bloody big giveaway that the word wasn’t real. Perhaps he ought to introduce Clara to him…

Yes, an excellent plan. He’d go get Clara and decide what to do from there. All good plans started with Clara. 

Punching in the coordinates for Clara’s flat a few hours after he last saw her, the Doctor sent the TARDIS into flight. She’d have had enough time to eat and do whatever else it was that humans needed to do and be raring to go again by now. If not, he’d take her for dinner somewhere spectacular. Somewhere that would definitely blow the socks off of any rubbish old Earth restaurant a PE teacher could take her. Not that it was a competition, of course. But naturally he’d win if it were.

With the TARDIS safely landed, the Doctor leaned back against the console with his eyes trained on the door and waited. When a few minutes passed and Clara didn’t burst through the doors, he frowned. She usually came running at the sound of his ship materialising. Perhaps he’d gotten his dates wrong and she was out at work… 

He made his way to the door, opening it to peer out into her bedroom. The sky visible through the window told him that it was at least the evening, so he’d gotten one thing right and she wouldn’t be out at work. What on earth could she possibly be doing that didn’t involve him or teaching small pudding brains?

Curiously, the Doctor stepped out into the hallway and scanned his surroundings. From there, he could hear the sound of the TV playing in the living room and rolled his eyes. Humans and their endless fascination with watching moving pictures. 

The living room door was pushed to with just a small slither of light visible in the crack between the doorframe. He pushed it open and promptly stepped inside. “Really Clara-,” he began, but the sentence died in his throat as he took in the spectacle taking place in the living room. In front of him lay Clara sprawled on top of PE, the two of them reclined on the sofa snogging and leaving the television entirely redundant. 

For a moment, he could do little more than gape. It felt as though the air had been stolen from his lungs and both of his hearts seemed to cease to function. The rest of his body had fallen into a similar state of catatonia as he stood frozen in the doorway. Naturally, his entrance had disrupted their canoodling and it was only the sound of his name coming from Clara as she hastily climbed off of PE that snapped him out of his state of shock. In an instant, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room back towards the safety of his TARDIS. 

Once inside, he strode over to the console and gripped the edges with white knuckles, his head hanging down as he fought to calm the tirade of emotions that threatened to overpower him. Behind him, he was faintly aware of the sound of the TARDIS door opening.

“Doctor, is everything okay?” Came the familiar sound of Clara’s voice. The question was laughable – he hadn’t felt less okay in quite some time. 

“Everything’s fine.” He lied in the most neutral tone he could muster, straightening up and turning to aimlessly fiddle with the console screen. “Go back to PE. I’ll come back next Wednesday.” He added, still not turning to look at her.

He could hear her footsteps as she walked towards him and he stiffened. She never could just drop it and leave him alone.

“You know, you’d be a lot more believable if you hadn’t said that whilst standing there stiff as a board.” She remarked not unkindly and reached out to place a gentle hand on his upper arm. If it were possible, he stiffened even further.

“Doctor, look at me.” Oh god he was doomed. Slowly, he turned around to face her, his eyes pained.

“It’s okay to-,” she started, but was promptly interrupted by the sound of the TARDIS door swinging open behind her. She took a step back from him, her hand falling away from her shoulder as she turned to face Danny.

“Is everything alright, Clara?” He asked, glancing between her and the Doctor with an expression of concern. 

“Everything was fine until you showed up.” The Doctor huffed before Clara could open her mouth to respond. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the immediate situation, or PE’s unwanted cameo in his life – he suspected both.

“Doctor!” Clara chastised and shot him a glare. “Could you at least try to make an effort to be nice?” 

“Why? This is my TARDIS. I don’t bring my pets into your home.” He responded petulantly as he folded his arms across his chest and lent back against the console.

“For Christ’s sake Doctor, he’s not a pet – he’s my boyfriend!” She cried indignantly back at him. 

“So you keep saying.” He grumbled back and then turned his back on them both, hiding the emotions that laid bare on his face by pretending to fiddle with some dials. 

“It’s okay, Clara. Like I said, he doesn’t have to like me.” PE’s voice sounded from behind him. _Why did he have to be so reasonable?_

“So I’m just stuck between two men who can’t be in the same room without arguing like a couple of school children?”

“The solution to that one is easy. Take PE out of my TARDIS and leave me in peace.” He turned around again, folding his arms across his chest in a display of defiance. Clara shook her head at him and, behind her, PE rolled his eyes.

“Do you know what, Doctor? Sometimes you can be a real arse.” Clara shot back and then turned to PE. “Come on Danny, let’s get out of here.” The man didn’t stop to argue and the pair of them walked out of the TARDIS without another word. 

Well, that could have gone better. 

With far more force than was necessary, the Doctor pushed the display screen away from him. The ship protested, but he didn’t have it in him to care much about hurting her feelings when his own had been thrown into such disarray. Barely holding it together, he turned his gaze to the ceiling.

“Help me out, would you old girl?” He asked, waiting for a moment before heading down the nearest corridor leading off of the console room. There, he spotted a door on the left-hand side that hadn’t been there earlier and uttered a silent thank you before pushing it open and stepping inside. He lent back against the closed door, shutting his eyes, and breathing deeply. After a few seconds, he pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and opened his eyes, pointing it at a large glass vase in front of him and promptly exploding the object into pieces with a satisfying crash. 

The room was littered with other objects, all made of glass and one by one each exploded into thousands of shards as he trained his screwdriver on them. His movements accelerated, the shards of glass from one object barely hitting the floor before the next was shattering apart. His breathing quickened, his heart rate accelerating to match as wave after wave of frustration rolled off of him and into the inanimate objects.

At some point during this make-shift therapy session, the Doctor had discarded the screwdriver in favour of using his hands to hurl some of the smaller objects across the large room at any solid surface he could reach. It was inherently more satisfying than using the screwdriver, and he continued in such a vain until he must have entirely lost his mind and decided to punch a pane of glass with his bare fist. The pain doused a bucket of ice-cold water over his emotions and brought him back to a semblance of reality. 

Panting heavily, he stared down at his now heavily bleeding hand with a frown. That would teach him for behaving like such a ridiculous fool. Over two thousand years of time and space and he was undone by the sight of two humans snogging on a sofa. The oncoming storm? What an absolute joke. The Daleks would have a field day if they knew he could be unhinged by the sight of Clara kissing a PE teacher. 

With a shrug of his shoulders, he removed his jacket and dropped it to the floor. Then, he grabbed a hold of one shirt sleeves and tugged sharply, tearing the bottom half off and using it to form a make-shift bandage for his hand. Blood had been steadily dripping from the sliced open skin and he didn’t fancy traipsing around the TARDIS corridors mopping it up later. Bandage haphazardly secured, he made his way to the door, tiptoeing over the shards of broken glass that littered almost every inch of the floor. 

“What on earth was all that-,” Came Clara’s voice as the door to the room swung open, freezing the Doctor to the spot. She took in the sight before her with widened eyes, before fixing him with one of those sad expressions that made his heart rate double. “Oh, Doctor. What have you done?” 

“How did you get in here?” He asked, his voice tired. He could have sworn he’d left the TARDIS floating in the vortex.

“You left the TARDIS in my bedroom. Bit difficult to ignore when it’s currently parked in front of my bed.” So not floating in the vortex then. What was wrong with him? Did Clara really have the capacity to turn his brain into complete mush? Actually, it was a question barely worth considering – of course she did. 

When he didn’t say anything for several moments, Clara reached out a hand towards him. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He felt like her badly behaved child, but he was too tired to argue and simply took her hand with his good one and allowed her to lead him out of the room. 

“Is the medical bay still where we last left it?” She turned over her shoulder to ask and he nodded silently. They walked back out of the corridor, into the console room and down another corridor opposite. The door to the medical bay was the second on the right and she dragged him in and pushed him towards the examination chair at one end of the room. Again, he obliged without argument and scooted back onto the chair, casting his gaze up to the ceiling. 

She was busying herself gathering up first aid supplies when he finally turned his gaze to her. “Clara.”

“Mmm?” She hummed back, rummaging around in a box for something. 

“I think you should go.” 

“What and leave you covered in shards of glass and bleeding all over the place? I don’t think so.” She frowned at him before turning her attention back to the array of supplies in front of her.

“I’m over 2000 years old, I think I can take care of myself.” He remarked dryly. 

“Really? Because in the relatively short time I’ve known you, you’ve kind of proven the exact opposite.” 

Well, she did have a point. “I’m fine, really. It’s just a few scratches.”

“You’ve got glass in your face.” She pointed out flatly and he frowned, reaching up to touch his cheek. Under his fingers were several small shards of glass jutting out of his skin. Perhaps he’d gotten just a tiny bit carried away…

“Look, we both know you’re going to repeatedly refuse help and I’m going to repeatedly ignore you until you give in and let me help you anyway, so why don’t you save us both some time and just give in now?” 

Again, another excellent point. He sighed heavily and let his hand fall down to settle on the chair beside him. Defeated once again by a short, bossy human. “Yes boss.” 

She flashed him a smile at that and it made one corner of his mouth twitch upwards slightly in spite of himself. “Right. I’ve got saline solution, sterile dressings, bandages, and tweezers for the glass. Sound good?”

“Good isn’t exactly the word I’d use, but it sounds sufficient if you’re going to insist on playing nurse.” He responded dryly and she rolled her eyes at him, setting the first aid supplies down on the table next to his chair. 

“Don’t be an arse.” She chastised gently and picked up the tweezers. He inwardly winced at the sight and considered spending a bit of regeneration energy to heal himself instead. The idea was discarded as quickly as it had come when he concluded that Clara would never let him hear the end of it if he did. 

“Now, this might hurt a bit but I’m going to be as gentle as I can.” She spoke as she moved towards him, tweezers held out like some sort of medieval torture device. “Could you just- you know, lower your head a bit. Not exactly the tallest person on the planet over here.”

The Doctor snorted and bent his head forward obediently. “I’ll say.” He looked up at her from underneath his eyebrows. “What about those heeled shoes you were wearing the other day? Where are they when you need them?”

Clara laughed. “I don’t wear them all the time. Mostly just on dates really.” 

“You wore them the whole time we robbed that bank.” He pointed out, giving her a look.

“That’s because you interrupted me in the middle of getting ready to go on a date.” 

“I still don’t understand why the shoes are synonymous with going on dates. What exactly do you do on these dates? Put up shelves?” 

She rolled her eyes. “They’re supposed to be y’know… sexy.” She gestured vaguely at her legs, before lifting the tweezers to his face and using them to pluck a shard of glass from the skin above his right eyebrow.

“Ow! I thought you said you were going to be gentle?!” He admonished, jerking his head back to give her an accusatory look.

“Sorry, I thought I was being gentle.” She responded sheepishly, reaching for his face again.

He grumbled under his breath and begrudgingly leaned his head forward again. “Why is being a few inches taller considered sexy?” 

Clara shrugged back at him, removing another shard of glass more slowly this time. He sucked in a breath but didn’t complain. “Makes your legs look longer. Men like it.”

“Why would they want your legs to look longer? You’d be all out of proportion.” He moved his eyes up and down as much of her body as he could see from where he was sat. 

She rolled her eyes again. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Danny?” 

He practically choked on the air in his lungs. “Because I’d rather ask a Dalek to read me a bedtime story.” 

She sighed at him, removing another shard of glass from his cheek. “You know, if you just gave him a chance, you’d realise he’s not all that bad.”

He paused for a moment, looking up through his eyelashes at her face. “And how would you feel if I showed up one Wednesday with another woman in the TARDIS?”

Clara looked taken aback, and he felt as though he’d won his first victory of the evening. “What’s that got to do with anything?” She asked, her voice going up half an octave.

He shrugged his shoulders non-committedly. “Think about it.”

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes after that, the only sound to break the silence being the hiss of his breath whenever Clara removed a particularly painful shard of glass from his skin. Eventually, she spoke his name; “Doctor?” He hummed his assent in reply.

“Remember when you said that you weren’t my boyfriend?” Another hummed affirmation came from him as he kept his gaze focused down on the chair underneath him. 

“What did you mean when you said that it wasn’t my mistake?” She asked as she pulled back slightly to look at him.

He remained quiet for a moment, still looking down as he mulled his thoughts over in his head. Finally, he raised his gaze to meet hers. “I meant exactly what I said.” It was as much of an admission of the truth as she was likely to get out of him. 

If he wasn’t imagining things, there was an almost imperceptible widening of her eyes before she looked away, placing the tweezers on the table next to him and reaching for the saline solution and some cotton wool. 

“It was a ridiculous thing to say anyway.” She remarked almost casually as she poured some of the saline solution onto the cotton wool and began to dab at the cuts on his face. He winced at the sharp pain and gripped the edges of the chair slightly. 

“What do you mean?” 

She shrugged. “You could never be my boyfriend.” _Yes, thank you Clara. Excellent way to rub salt in my literal wounds._ He thought to himself bitterly before she continued. “You’re far too important for that.” She finished, meeting his gaze with a smile. 

The Doctor swallowed the lump in his throat, suddenly acutely aware of their proximity to one another. They were both saying things without really saying them and were rapidly falling into dangerous territory. He cleared his throat, feeling as though there was less oxygen in the room than there had been previously. 

“Yes well, last of the Time Lords and all that.” He responded with a forced smirk, trying to inject some humour into the conversation. “I’m kind of a big deal.” He added for effect.

Clara rolled her eyes and laughed. “And you call me an egomaniac.” 

“It’s why we get along so well.” He responded, his forced smirk morphing into a genuine smile. 

They fell into a comfortable silence after that as Clara removed the scrap of shirt wrapped around his hand. She frowned disapprovingly at the deep gashes that littered his skin underneath and set to work cleaning and properly dressing his hand. When she was finished, she took a step back to look him up and down and admire her handywork.

“There. Almost good as new.” She said with a small smile.

He straightened up, rolling his neck to ease out the ache that had set into his muscles. Standing up, he looked down at her with a small smirk. “Thank you, nurse Oswald.”

“You’re welcome, Doctor grumpy.” She teased with a grin. 

He stared at her with one eyebrow raised. _“Really? Doctor Grumpy?_ That’s the best you could come up with?” 

She shrugged and laughed. “On short notice yeah.” Another grin. “Besides, it’s not like the shoe doesn’t fit.”

“Touché.” He quipped back, vaguely amused. 

“Come on then. I think it’s time you got some rest – you look exhausted.” Clara held out a hand towards him and he eyed it curiously for a moment before slowly lacing his fingers between hers. 

“Is this something we’re doing all the time now?” He asked as she led him out of the medical bay. “This holding hands thing.” 

She shot him a grin over her shoulder. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it.” 

She wasn’t wrong, but he had a grumpy persona to keep up. “I’m not convinced.” He lied as he followed her back into the console room. 

Clara eventually dropped his hand and turned to give him a look that he thought was something along the lines of concern. “So, can I trust you not to go smashing up bits of glass again? Or do I need to sleep next to you all night to keep you out of trouble?” She asked, a glimmer of amusement flashing across her face.

 _Yes, you absolutely do need to sleep next to me all night._ His brain supplied unhelpfully. He silently scolded it and shoved his hands into his pockets, leaning back against the console and trying to act casual. “I can’t promise to stay out of trouble, but I can promise to make a considerable effort to avoid glass for the foreseeable future.” 

She laughed and shook her head at him. “I feel like that’s the best I can hope for with your reputation.” 

He smirked. “Trouble is my middle name.” 

“Well try to get some sleep before you go off hunting for anymore. You insult people more when you’re tired.” She pointed out with a smile before heading for the door. Before he could come back with a witty remark, she looked back over her shoulder and interrupted his thought process. 

“By the way, next time you could try just telling me how you’re feeling instead of exploding hundreds of pieces of glass into your skin.” And with that parting remark she was gone.

The Doctor stared at the door she’d left through for a moment and then turned back to the console, making a point to actually dematerialise the TARDIS this time and leave her floating in the vortex. How exactly did Clara expect him to explain that the sight of her snogging her soldier boyfriend had made him want to claw out his own insides and that he would rather like to be chosen for all future activities involving snogging instead? Whilst being entirely platonic and maintaining his non-boyfriend stance of course. 

Next time he’d just blow up a planet instead.


End file.
